2017年1月13日 星期五

"Reflections on the Revolution in France" ByEdmund Burke

"Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security."

"Superstition is the religion of feeble minds."

"When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people."

--from "Reflections on the Revolution in France" 1790

The most important works of Edmund Burke, one of the greatest political thinker of the past three centuries, are gathered here in one comprehensive volume. Accompanying his influential masterpiece, Reflections on the Revolution in France, is a selection of pamphlets, speeches, public letters, private correspondence and, for the first time, two important and previously uncollected early essays. Philosopher, statesman, and founder of conservatism, Burke was a dazzling orator and a visionary theorist who spent his long political career fighting abuses of power. He wrote at a time of great change, against the backdrop of the revolt of the American colonies, the expansion of the British Empire, the collapse of Ireland, and the French Revolution. Burke argued passionately in support of the American revolutionaries and in equally impassioned opposition to the horrors of the unfolding French Revolution. Making a case for upholding established rights and customs, and advocating incremental reform rather than radical revolutionary change, Burke’s writings have profoundly influenced modern democracies up to the present day. READ an excerpt here: http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/…/reflections-on-the-rev…/#

Accompanying his influential masterpiece, Reflections on the Revolution in France, is a selection of pamphlets, speeches, public letters, private correspondence and, for the first time, two important and previously uncollected early essays. Philosopher, statesman, and founder of conservatism, Burke was a dazzling orator and a visionary theorist who spent his long political career fighting abuses of power. He wrote at a time of great change, against the backdrop of the revolt of the American colonies, the expansion of the British Empire, the collapse of Ireland, and the French Revolution. Burke argued passionately in support of the American revolutionaries and in equally impassioned opposition to the horrors of the unfolding French Revolution. Making a case for upholding established rights and customs, and advocating incremental reform rather than radical revolutionary change, Burke’s writings have profoundly influenced modern democracies up to the present day. READ an excerpt here:http://knopfdoubleday.com/…/reflections-on-the-revolution-…/

Edmund Burke—born on this day 1729—is best known for his criticism of the French revolution. The statesman was a keen defender of liberty, however, pushing to curb the slave trade a quarter of a century before it was abolished